Playsport is known for their wildly successful Motorsport Manager series of PC and mobile games, and as you should know by now, they’re back with Motorsport Mobile Manager 3, the third installment of MM’s mobile series. If you’re looking for an auto racing game that tests your ability to manage a team, rather than your reflexes and driving skills as you navigate those turns and avoid crashing into other cars, this one should be right up your alley and then some. This time, you’ll have a choice between multiple racing types, including open wheel/formula and GT racing, and while a lot of the features you may know from previous versions of the game are once again in place, Playsport has added quite a few new ones this year, including the Supplier Network, Invitational races, Mechanics, and much more!

We’ve already tackled the basics of the game in our Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 beginner’s guide, where we talked about a handful of new features, refreshed you on the existing ones, and gave you some simple tips for improving your chances of winning races. For this Motorsport Mobile Manager 3 strategy guide, we’ll now be moving on to the intermediate level, as we discuss more new features, delve into the intricacies of managing your drivers, and give you all the knowledge you need to survive the rest of your first season in the game!

1. Improving Your Drivers

As long as your drivers have yet to reach their potential, which is indicated by the number of stars under their names, including the ones that are partially shaded, they will earn Improvement Points, mostly through good performances in races. They may also enjoy a statistical boost if you chose Former Driver as your backstory as team principal/owner, and certain events, such as a good interview, offer temporary boosts (in this case, it would be an improvement to Sponsor Appeal). You can use the improvement points for long-term improvements to their stats, but which stats should you be focusing on? Let’s first take a look at all eight of them and what they mean.

Most of the stats are self-explanatory, but to break each of them down, Braking refers to their ability to hit the brakes at the right time, thus allowing to go faster. Consistency affects the evenness of their lap times. Cornering helps drivers navigate corners better to improve their speed. Focus determines how likely they are to crash in a race. Overtaking determines their ability to overtake other drivers. Smoothness impacts their ability to drive fluidly and extend the life of their tires. Race Starts affects your drivers’ ability to get off to a good, fast start to a race. Finally, Defending determines how well they avoid being overtaken by other drivers. Yes, it’s pretty straightforward if you come to think of it.

When talking about which stats you should improve, it’s generally a good idea to focus on whatever the weakness of your driver is, or the stats that are farthest away from reaching their potential. (The actual stat is the larger number in the middle of each circle, while the potential stat is the smaller number underneath it.) It would depend from driver to driver, but if we are to choose a stat that’s best to focus on, we’d say Focus and Smoothness. For the former, you want to avoid those random crashes that take place at the worst possible time, and for the latter, this is all about maximizing the lifespan of your tires and allowing for a more economical pit strategy.

2. Other Driver Data To Pay Attention To

If you scroll down the driver screen, you’ll see other important pieces of information on the drivers currently on your team. Contracted Status, of course, displays their contract information, and you should pay attention to this — you don’t want to be caught at the last minute trying to re-sign your No. 1 driver with their contract due to expire soon!

New to Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is the Personality section, which we will be explaining in the very next tip — in a nutshell, you’ll want to examine this section closely because it could determine if your current driver, or someone you’re planning to hire, is a potential asset or a liability. There are also Traits or Modifiers for certain drivers, such as Good or Bad Interview, that likewise need to be looked at, even if they are temporary impacts.

Lastly, you’ve got your driver’s Sponsor Appeal, which is one thing that could make you think twice about an otherwise attractive, talented driver. If they have very poor/poor Sponsor Appeal, that’s going to affect your team’s overall Sponsor Appeal, and thusly reduce the quality of sponsors you’ll be attracting! That, of course, means less money in your bank account after each race. Our rule of thumb is this — if a mediocre driver has great Sponsor Appeal, that will never be enough to cancel out their weaknesses on the track, but if a talented driver has very poor or poor Sponsor Appeal, you may want to pass on them unless your other driver has great Sponsor Appeal.

3. Understanding Personalities

As we mentioned above, Personalities is a new feature in Motorsport Manager Mobile 3, as it gives each of the game’s many, many drivers something else that makes them a lot like real-life race car drivers — their own special quirks and qualities that could affect their driving style, relationship with mechanics, or even their relationship with the media!

A positive, or green personality gives drivers permanent buffs that cancel out certain negatives. For example, a driver with an Indestructible personality won’t be injured if their car crashes in a race, while someone who is Charismatic won’t get the Bad Interview trait, which, as we explained above, otherwise hurts their Sponsor Appeal. Drivers who have a Dedicated personality benefit from their relationship with their mechanic (more on this later) improving 25 percent faster. Heck, there are even Pay Drivers, who pay you several hundreds of thousands per race they compete in, and Beautiful drivers (this apparently applies to both male and female drivers) whose good looks give them an additional Sponsor Appeal slot!

Not all personalities are positive ones, as there are other drivers who carry a bad attitude with them, or have a certain temperament on the track that negatively impacts their performance. These are your negative, or red personalities. Fuel Hungry drivers are an example of the latter, and that’s self-explanatory. For the former, Mercenary drivers will demand more money than what they’re worth during contract negotiation time, and Mean drivers will have their mechanic relationship capped at 50 percent. (After all, who’d want to work with someone like that?)

There are other positive and negative personalities that we could mention if we only had more time to do so, but there are also drivers whose personalities are perfectly neutral. These are your Regular Joes and Janes (with a matching gray icon), who don’t come with any buffs or nerfs that modify their performance, relationships, and the like.

4. Gaining And Using Influence

As promised, we’re going to be talking about Influence, which is one of the most prominent new features in Motorsport Manager Mobile 3. Influence is a premium currency of sorts that allows you to take advantage of certain perks — “sneaky” ones, as the game describes them. But before we talk about how and how not to use your Influence, let’s talk about something arguably more important — how do you earn it anyway?

Typically, the best way to gain Influence is through signing sponsorship deals. As we mentioned in the beginner’s guide when we were discussing sponsors, each potential Sponsor awards you with a certain amount of Influence (or none at all) if you sign a deal with them, and that could play a part in your choice of sponsor once a contract comes up. You can also earn Influence through random events, as we’ll be explaining in the tip about Dilemmas — in many cases, you could earn a ton of Influence by making certain decisions through this returning feature!

When it comes to spending your Influence, there will be many occasions in which the game will prompt you if you want to “bend the rules” of spend your Influence on a certain action. For example, you can use your Influence to create a much more awesome part than your current staff of Engineers is capable of manufacturing — the cost may vary, but this will usually cost you around 30 Influence or so. You can also spend Influence to convince certain drivers to join your team/convince them to renegotiate after initial talks break down; the cost, once again, is variable, this time mostly depending on the driver’s rating. It’s also possible to spend 5 influence or so make someone new available immediately when searching for new Engineers or Mechanics. (Just don’t expect a good one all the time!)

The first option is quite useful if you’re just starting out, as the parts you’ll end up creating typically won’t be too impressive in terms of Performance or Reliability. Using Influence to court top drivers is very seldom prudent — you could easily spend more than 100 Influence on pirating a five-star driver, after all! That too applies to using Influence to make a new staff candidate available for hire — it’s cheap, but as we mentioned, you’ll be getting a random candidate who may or may not be any good!

One thing you shouldn’t spend Influence points on is rushing Supplier Network acquisitions so you can move on to another one. Rushing will typically cost you upwards of 20 Influence if the acquisition hasn’t been started yet, so be patient when it comes to this feature — if you want to spend a lot of Influence, spend it on breaking the rules to manufacture great parts.

5. Dealing With Dilemmas

Dilemmas are back in Motorsport Manager Mobile 3, and while they don’t appear to be as common as they used to be, these random events still pop up from time to time, shaking things up and asking you to make an important decision — someone is asking you to stop the fake news from spreading, so do you do it right away and earn 25 Influence, or do you hesitate and ask to be paid in cash so you can do as requested? What’s more important, a big innovation that could improve your cars’ Tire Wear or one that could improve their Fuel Efficiency? Shall you pay big money to prevent a permanent de-buff to your driver’s stats or other attributes, or do nothing and sacrifice, say, a point of Sponsor Appeal? You’ve got to choose one or the other, and in many of the Dilemmas, it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation where you lose something either way.

Just like in previous editions of Motorsport Manager Mobile, there are few hard, fast rules when it comes to choosing options in Dilemmas. The most basic rule, however, may be to consider your needs at the time of the Dilemma and your finances — a payment of a million dollars to prevent a nerf/de-buff is only a drop in the water if you’re flush with cash, but it’s not worth it if it’s going to plunge your balance into the red. Take the cash if you’re short on it, take the Influence if you used up all your Influence points on bending the rules in one way or another. You get the idea — think of what you’re currently short of, and if you aren’t necessarily short of anything, always side in favor of your drivers or staff members and pay up if you have to.

6. Earn Money Through The Invitational Races

This is a new feature in the game, and you’ll notice it around the midway point of your first season — the game now comes with invitational races which test your qualifying and pit strategy and put those tactics to the mettle. Take note, however, that you will not be representing the team you chose in your save game, nor would you be able to use the drivers you hired for that team. The game will assign drivers to you based on your own country of origin, and pit you against nine other countries’ teams, with a chance to earn upwards of $1,500,000 if you get a podium finish!

Each race has a certain unique rule that sets them apart from the usual races you take part in. For example, the Duel in the Desert, which is set in the Bahrain racetrack, is an elimination race where you could be eliminated if you stay at last place for too long — usually, there are only a few cars out of 20 that end up finishing this race! Later on in your Tier 4 (lowest tier) season, you’ll take part in the Endurance Invitational in Ardennes, which is a “single-race Endurance challenge.” Later on, you’ll master the Energy Recovery system in Monaco, and take part in a marathon-level 50-lap race in Phoenix as you make it to Tier 3. These are just some of the unusual Invitational races you can take part in — they’re quite interesting, and also rewarding if you’ve got your strategy down pat!

7. The Supplier Network

Once again, we’re tackling something new for Motorsport Manager Mobile fans, as Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 introduced the Supplier Network, among many other new features. While it may look a bit complicated at first, the gist of this feature is that you can get up to 24 supplier bonuses by targeting assets and “acquiring” them. In order to activate the bonuses, you’ll need to meet each bonus’ required assets delivered by truck, boat, and plane, with the first bonus, an automatic $100,000 earnings per race, kicking in once you’ve acquired one asset via each mode of transportation. You also get an Acquisition Bonus once you use this feature for the first time — the Staff Integration Program, which makes one Famous (or rare) Engineer available for hire.

Acquiring an asset will take a certain number of races to complete, and while you can use your Influence to expedite the acquisition, we did mention earlier that this is not at all recommended, due to the high cost to rush acquisitions before you’ve actually targeted the asset.

Working on the Outsourced Logistics upgrade in your headquarters could help you better leverage the Supplier Network, as this allows you to target one additional node in the network and lets you multi-task by acquiring multiple assets via plane, boat, or truck at the same time.

8. Make Sure To Re-Sign Those Good Drivers And Staff Members While Early

We may need to talk about the actual contract negotiation process in a separate tip at another time, but since this is merely our intermediate guide, we shall advise you for now to keep your eyes peeled for those notifications on the home menu. If a driver or staff member’s contract is about to expire, you’ll see the words “Contract expiring soon!” highlighted in red, which means it’s time for you to decide whether you want to keep that driver or staff member.

In most cases, we wouldn’t sweat it if a driver, engineer, or mechanic with a current or potential three-star rating or lower walks, and if you’ve got someone with a lousy one-star rating (usually the No. 2 driver you start with), they’re better off replaced sooner or later, even before their contract expires.

9. Preparing The Budget For Next Season’s Car

This is one of the more expensive things you’ll need to pay for during the course of a season, but it’s hard to argue with this one — you need to get yourself ready for the future, and that means breaking the bank if you want the best possible chance for a championship once the next season comes around, or the best chance of being competitive if you’re due for promotion to the next tier.

For this new edition of Motorsport Mobile Manager, you’ll now be able to choose a Design Focus for the upcoming season’s car. You can choose Power, which gives all new parts a performance boost in the coming season, Chassis, which improves fuel efficiency and tire wear, or Complexity, which gives you more car bonus tokens at the start of the new season. We suggest going with Chassis once you make your first budget for a new season, as your fuel efficiency and tire wear isn’t very good to start with.

Aside from Design Focus, you’ll also need to allot money for the actual research and development process. The more money you spend, the better your chances of having a great car for the new season, but make sure you aren’t overspending! There are penalties, just as usual, for staying in the red for too long, and you wouldn’t want to have a negative balance once you’re done spending for R&D. We suggest spending $2 million for R&D in your first new season budget — this may give you a bit of a negative balance, but it shouldn’t be for long, provided you chose the right sponsors and are doing well in the races.

10. Dealing With Mechanics On Race Day

We would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t include at least one tip that deals with the racing itself, so here you go — we’ve got a brief explanation of how you’ll be interacting with your mechanics on race day itself. We previously explained that the setup part of qualifying is a lot like blackjack — you don’t want to go “bust” and play too many cards as you end up going over the number of wrenches each mechanic has. This helps your cars’ qualifying times, but how do your mechanics play into the equation when you’re actually racing?

When it comes to the races, you can choose Mechanic Bonuses, which may differ per mechanic and may include, but not be limited to, improved performance for certain types of tires, and faster fix times or pit stops. Certain bonuses can only be activated if your driver’s relationship with their mechanic is at a certain level, so if that happens to be the case, you may also choose to improve their relationship with a 10 percent boost. This, however, won’t grant you any bonuses for pit times, repair times, or whatnot. Choose your bonuses wisely, because this could play a big part in whether you win the race, finish in the podium, or worse, finish out of the points!